


The Witch and the Wanderer

by greygerbil



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 02:52:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14632563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: Weary of his life as the prince, Victor takes the opportunity Lady Lilia provides with a masquerade to pretend to be someone else for an evening. There, he meets a man dressed as a witch who also seems to be escaping real life's problems. He finds solace with the stranger - who might not be as unknown to him as he thinks.





	The Witch and the Wanderer

**Author's Note:**

> Written for YoI Royalty Week, Day 1: Balls and Masquerades: That fateful moment. A night to remember, a night of no pretenses. Time loses meaning as we dance the night away.

Victor had been to many a masquerade. As the crown prince, he had an automatic invitation to just about any festivity in the Winter Kingdom’s capital city, and a duty to show his face at any where his absence might be taken as a slight. As a child, he had thought masquerades very exciting; as an adult, he was more realistic. While these masked balls afforded a handy opportunity to flaunt wealth and style, they were not as a rule nearly as mysterious as advertised. Even with faces covered and shapes hidden, most people who cropped up there had usually been in polite society for years, making it impossible not to at least recognise their voices. With the game already up, masquerades tended to turn into functions like any other an hour in at the latest, when everyone had been found out, with the same demands to decorum and, for him personally, the need to run around and greet every single person who might feel insulted if not given some royal attention. Everyone’s clothes were just slightly more interesting, but since no one ever dared tempt a scandal, even that was not always true.

When Victor had told Lilia as much as she handed him his invitation, she had given him a haughty smile. “You don’t think I haven’t thought of that, do you? Don’t worry, if you do not make yourself obvious, you won’t be revealed that night.”

Victor’s patience for dreary social events had long grown thin, but little in the mood as he was for yet another ball, turning down an invitation by Lilia was just about unthinkable to him. She had tutored him on anything from public speech to dancing to proper table etiquette in his younger years (and sometimes it felt like she still did when she caught him slacking in any of her many disciplines). At least, he had considered, turning the invitation in his hand, he would take her word for it that he would be able to hide if he wanted to.

Not being Prince Victor might actually be fun.

Eschewing the seamstress’ ideas for the beautiful robes of saints, adorned livery of famous knights and colourful garb of the fae folk, he ordered a long dark traveller’s cloak artificially frayed at the edges and embroidered with a gruesome grey image of a snarling wolf – slightly more dangerous-looking than his beloved poodle Makkachin, whose spirit he still imagined to be infered in the image. Added to that were rough leather trousers, a scuffed scabbard at his belt, knee-high boots, and a mask that hid most of his face but for his mouth and chin behind a black surface, adorned with simple patterns of the moon and the stars. A brass lantern completed the look of the lone night wanderer. It was not fit for a future king, but then, for once, he didn’t plan on being one, and the very thought filled him with excitement when he dressed himself for the ball that night.

Lilia’s plans where revealed as Victor handed his gold-rimmed invitation to her head servant waiting at the entrance of her villa and was given a goblet of wine in return. He took a sip of the sweet red liquid and then spoke to thank the man and found that his voice had dropped an octave.

“What’s in this?” he asked, staring at the goblet.

“I doubt Lady Lilia would allow me to tell,” the servant answered behind his blank mask.

Amused, Victor sipped the rest of the potion. He had a feeling he knew now why Lilia had asked to talk to the court alchemist last week.

Victor found a spring in his step as he moved through the crowd, lantern swinging in his hand, cape billowing out behind him. There was a good chance he actually wouldn’t have to do the rounds this evening, and since he was unrecognisable as the very eligible and very unmarried prince, perhaps he could also avoid the constant exercises in polite refusal as young women and men were thrown in his way by ambitious parents. Even if people eventually figured out who he had been, he could still save himself by claiming he had wanted to mingle among his subjects unrecognised for once.

Seizing up the crowd, Victor could still recognise some people at first glance, and it was very probably because they wanted to be known, since they were invariably wearing the most elaborate and expensive costumes. An exception was his cousin Yuri, who hated masked balls and hadn’t bothered to do anything but pull a white mask with feline features over his face, light blond hair spilling out around it, his royal uniform giving him away if his defiant slump and scowl wouldn’t already have. When he opened his mouth to answer some woman’s question, Victor found the wine had changed his voice to a mouse-like squeak. Even with the mask, he could see his anger rising with every word. Victor turned away lest he be discovered by the fact that he could not hold his laughter.

He had just refilled his goblet with ordinary wine this time when he noted that among the dryads, angels, and heroes of old, there was another creature in darker colours, who was currently looking up at a large portrait of one of Lilia’s ancestors. The mask covering the upper part of his face had horns and was attached to a mass of feathers and wooden pearls draped over his hair and cascading over his bare shoulders. He wore lipstick in a dark shade of purple and coal around what was visible of the skin around the eyes behind the mask. Stones with rune carvings in muted colours were spread all over the skirt and wide sleeves, pretending to be haphazard yet obviously placed for effect. Dark claws for fingernails completed the impression. The dress was as much cut to resemble a woman’s form as the wearer’s obviously male body allowed, narrowing at the waist before billowing out into many untidy layers of dark fabrics. Despite that, there was no attempt made to pretend there was anything to show off in the front, or to hide the broadness of the shoulders or lean muscle of his arms. The effect of the mismatch was striking in its own right, Victor found. He himself had liked to play with it in earlier, prettier costumes, but never been quite bold enough to simply wear dress.

Delighted by his find, Victor sidled up closer to the demonic creature.

“That’s Lady Lilia’s great-grandaunt,” he said over the sound of conversations buzzing around them and string music wafting from the ballroom, pointing his goblet at the portrait.

“Was she the one who won the battle by the River at Mormansk?”

The man’s voice was high and smooth and the way he stopped at the first word told Victor talking with it still confused him.

“Indeed.”

When the man faced Victor, he grew still for a moment.

“You stick out between all the jewel-encrusted satin around here,” he added, running his gaze up and down the costume. “A nightly wanderer?”

“I suppose it’s my way of saying I wasn’t really in the mood to waste a whole evening tarrying at a ball and would rather run off into the woods than engage my good manners,” Victor joked, alcohol and anonymity loosening his tongue perhaps more than they should.

The man cocked his head, corner of his mouth pulling downwards.

“I understand,” he said, his bare shoulders sinking under an invisible weight for a moment.

“What are you?” Victor asked.

“A witch,” the man answered. “When I got the invitation, I was reading a book by Kristina Trusova…”

“‘The Black-River Princess?’” Victor exclaimed, surprised.

Suddenly, the dark make-up and wild costume fitted itself as an image over the description of the book’s villain that had remained in the back of his mind, a witch who had stolen the princess’ lover away into the forest, jealous of their affection for each other.

The witch stared back.

“Yes! I have met so few people who know Trusova.”

“It’s not the kind of literature you talk about reading without a mask,” Victor said, laughing.

Truly, a lot of it was rather melodramatic romance, but Victor was quite in love with the wide-eyed naiveté and relentless passion of the books. When he’d been young, he had read all of Trusova’s works, torn between hope and envy as he studied her lovers’ devotion to each other, and then hid the books in the back of his shelves so his tutor Yakov wouldn’t chew him out for his brain-rotting choice of literature. Perhaps it _had_ rotted his brain, at that. He was still looking to feel quite as torn away by love someday as Trusova’s characters were.

“I would!” the witch declared proudly. “I am not ashamed to praise literature with so much feeling. Though – I wouldn’t know whom to talk to about them,” he added, slightly less pompously.

“Well, now you have me.” Victor sipped at his goblet. “Though I think maybe we should dance first, if you’d like? No one else might, but Lady Lilia will surely figure out who I am, and if she remembers I supported the wall all evening, I will get a lecture.”

“Me too,” the witch said with a nod and Victor wondered briefly who he was. Speculating was difficult even knowing he apparently knew Lilia more closely, though. She had been training the children of the country’s elite for thirty-odd years and made countless inroads into important families. The witch looked to be a young man from the lack of lines around his mouth, but that was all Victor could say, so he could really be any one of her great many students.

The witch offered his arm and Victor took it, distracted from his thoughts by the looks they were getting as they made their way past small groups of people idly chattering. You could have believed they had come together, dark spots in the crowd that they were. Victor left his lantern on a table and then headed to the wide dance floor with the witch, where a dozen fancifully dressed couples were already turning, watched by others who preferred loitering by the buffet and wine bottles.

Once on the dance floor, Victor used the fact that he already had a hand on the witch’s arm to quickly slide it over to his side before he grabbed his other hand with a charming smile, pulling them into the first turn so quickly the witch had no chance to protest his position. Even under the mask he could see the surprise by the half-opened mouth and felt slightly smug about it. It was always nice to throw people off their game a bit.

Despite the quick start, they fell into a waltz that went as smooth as water flowing. It surprised Victor how easy it was; the witch was apparently quite the dancer.

“What made an errant knight stroll into an illustrious party, then?” the witch asked. “Your costume is too good to say you just didn’t want to come at all.”

With a few wide steps, Victor lead the witch away from the other couples, closer towards the violin players providing the melody on which they floated, and which would hopefully conceal their conversation from prying ears.

“I just haven’t been in the mood for being the fairy king lately,” Victor said thoughtfully, nodding towards a man in a glittering garb covered in polished silver pieces and white gemstones, the elaborate construct of wings on his back marking him as one of the fae folk for tonight, who had always been a favourite image for people constructing pretty costumes around here. It looked much like what Victor used to wear when he still had the energy to want to impress people. “I thought it might be fun to be undesirable for an evening.”

“The words of someone who isn’t used to it in everyday life, I see,” the witch answered, with slight distaste in his voice.

Knitting his brows under the mask, Victor looked at him. They were almost exactly the same height, so the witch’s midnight-blue eyes were only an arm’s length from his face.

“I doubt you don’t have your admirers, unless your mask hides a lot more than I think it does.” He laughed when the witch stumbled over his own feet at the compliment, bringing them briefly out of step. “Why are you the witch, anyway? Why not the princess or her knight?”

“Lately, life taught me that it seems more realistic for me to expect to sit on the side-lines watching other people fall in love,” the witch answered, almost sulking.

Victor had to laugh again at the tone. 

“It does feel like that sometimes,” he admitted, still. Hadn’t he himself thought it watching people pair off while he sat lonely on his throne? “I suppose for me, it doesn’t matter. If I don’t make a suitable decision soon, I expect to be handed my spouse.”

Another point of why he’d fled into these books back then and even picked them up sometimes these days, he guessed, knowing his own choices would be severely limited to a small pool of those with enough pedigree and money.

“That’s not tonight, though,” the witch said, sympathetically.

Victor smiled. Strange how the mask apparently tempted him to let on more than he would without it. You’d think the first instinct would be to keep hiding, if you were already doing it.

He pulled the witch closer than it was strictly seemly for a moment. Tonight, there was indeed no one clamouring to push their children on the stranger in the vagabond costume, and if the man in his arms had his own troubles, perhaps Victor could make him forget about them, too. That could be enough now – two romantics dressed for doom and escape in senseless defiance of whatever fate the real world had in store for them.

The music picked up the pace and they followed. Victor was an outstandingly proficient dancer – he was proud to say he hadn’t missed a step since the last time he had taken dance classes –, but the witch was not far behind, and he moved with feeling and confidence. Victor found himself pulled along, sometimes a little off the beat, but always in a movement that seemed perfectly fitted to the music regardless. The witch tempted until Victor pulled them back on the proper course, and again, and again. It was a game he got lost in until they had danced so long he was completely parched and could feel sweat beading on his forehead behind the mask.

They left the dance floor together, eventually, and only at the witch’s breathless request, for Victor would have held out even longer just to continue, happy to dance, with no thought to who he was or what. Only when they stepped away did he realise how many eyes were on them and he wondered briefly what their wild waltz had looked like from outside, but then decided he really didn’t care.

The witch found two new goblets of wine for them and Victor breathed in deeply as he stepped out onto the balcony, a summer wind rushing fresh air into his face, carrying the scent of lilac and roses up from the gardens. Leaning with his back against the stone railing, the witch nodded back towards the entrance of the dance hall. Against the dark night sky and contrasted with his costume, his skin shone pale. Victor found himself staring at the elegant column of his neck, the long fingers wrapped around the railing, the slight blush that coloured his ears, probably a result of the exertion.

“You forgot your lantern,” the witch pointed out.

Victor placed his goblet down on the pedestal of a cupid’s statue.

“I think I still need both hands,” he said.

As the witch turned an inquisitive gaze on him, Victor grabbed him by the hips and kissed him on the mouth.

-

Victor still thought about that kiss days later and the memory became searing in its clarity as he stood in the empty ballroom in Lilia’s mansion, looking through the open doors out onto the balcony where they had stood, embracing, lost in each other. Just as they separated, the sound of a gong striking midnight had called the guests back to the ballroom to witness a speech by the hostess, who had revealed her face the moment as all lights in the room were extinguished at once.

It was a quite impressive bit of showmanship, but in the excitedly wavering crowd, Victor had lost his grip on the witch’s hand and when he looked for him again, he was gone. Even as Victor hurried through all the public rooms of the castle multiple times he saw no glimpse of him, and Victor was haunted by the terrible thought that perhaps he had fled him on purpose.

However, Victor was not yet willing to accept that without at least a word from the witch's lips. The problem was – he would have to know who had been under that costume first and he _would_ find out, somehow. He had to. He hadn’t been as intrigued by anything or anyone as much as by the witch that night in such a long time.

“What reason is there to look so morose, Prince Victor? Is there any particularly tragic message you have to relay?”

Despite the fact that she had known him since he had been in swaddling clothes, Lilia always addressed him with his proper title; and despite the fact that Victor was to be the king, she expected him to use hers as well and even the thought of disobeying her made Victor quake in his boots.

“I’ve met and lost a man at your masquerade, Lady Lilia,” he said with a wan smile.

Victor had already prepared himself for Lilia telling him she hadn’t paid any attention to him that evening, or that she simply refused to give away who her guests were to preserve their privacy and her reputation. However, she just raised a perfectly arched brow at him in response.

“Yes, I saw him looking for you late that night, and you for him. I suppose it never occurred to either of you to stand still for a moment to see if you would be found. You _were_ both quite drunk, I think. Anyway, why don’t you just talk to him?”

“How would I do that? I don’t know who he is!” Victor said, pacing towards her. “But you do, don’t you?”

Lilia stared at him.

“Excuse me?” she asked. “You two were dancing like my house was a tavern for the better part of two hours – and you never found out who he is?”

“We were in the moment,” Victor said defensively. He could hardly have asked, besides. The witch would have wanted to know who he was in turn, and if he’d been aware of his position, surely he wouldn’t have been as comfortable with Victor. It was a risk he ran now, of course, but he had no choice.

“Prince Victor.” She shook her head in clear exasperation. “You know him.”

“I do?”

Victor perked up.

“I daresay he is your oldest acquaintance safe for your parents and your wet-nurse.”

Briefly, Victor was stumped. He had known a lot of young lords around the region even when he was a babe, for everyone brought their children to see the king’s newborn son, of course. But how was he supposed to know which of them he’d met first?

Realisation hit him suddenly and swiftly. An old, favourite tale in his father’s castle was that when his mother had been in labour, the midwives had been quite busy, for one of her ladies-in-waiting, wife to a middling lord turned rich entrepreneur in the wool trade, was also giving birth to a son in that same castle on that same night. The two boys had been born barely an hour apart, but separated by the clock striking midnight, one on the 25th, one on the 26th of the last month of the year. They had been placed in the same cradle together for that first night of their life.

“Georgi?” he asked, incredulously.

“Of course it was him,” Lilia answered, voice full of impatience. “You need to get your head out of the clouds every once in a while, Prince Victor, lest people mistake you for a blind fool. Not that the same is not true for Lord Georgi as a general rule.”

Victor stood silently in the middle of the empty ballroom. A blind fool he might be – but not just because he had not seen through the masquerade. How had he never considered how Georgi danced, and what he read, and how he might try to assuage Victor's worries if Victor had only ever told him? They had basically grown up together under Lord Yakov’s tutelage. Perhaps, though, that was what had made it so easy to overlook so many things: thinking that he knew everything about Georgi that there was to know.

“Lady Lilia, thank you for your help. I think I must take my leave,” Victor said, turning towards the large winged doors.

“You got here five minutes ago!”

Victor bowed as he passed her by and then hurried down the corridor.

-

“What did you call me up to your rooms for, Vitya?”

Victor looked Georgi up and down as he stood in the door to his chambers. He was wearing a dark sergeant’s uniform with silver buttons, collar done up to the neck, even his hands covered in leather gloves, his hair brushed into order. He looked proper – Victor was sure Lilia would have approved. His deep voice was back. There was no trace of that wild witch of the woods left and yet now that he knew, Victor of course recognised the poised stance, the pointed chin, the shape of the mouth he’d kissed.

His first thought had been to drag Georgi off the training yard out of the rows of the king’s honour guard the moment he returned from Lilia’s villa. However, he had stopped himself just short of that. What they’d had that night had been special, and he wanted to make their reunion something memorable, too. Something, perhaps, to build on.

“I wanted to show you something.”

Victor gestured at a divan and Georgi sat down, following him with his gaze as Victor crossed the room and picked up a book from the table. He had put it there in preparation.

“This one is new. It collects all the chapters she recently published in the papers. I thought you might want to have a look, too.”

“‘She?’” Georgi echoed, clearly not catching on to what conversation Victor was continuing yet.

He took the book from his hand and opened it to the first page to find the title and the author’s name. His fingers grew still on the page. He didn’t look up.

“Ah,” he said, quietly. “You figured it out.”

Victor stared at him in open-mouthed surprise.

“You knew?!”

“No, not at first.” Georgi grasped the book with both hands after he had shut it, like he was holding on to it for support. “But – I went out into the courtyard to look for you and saw you take off your mask as you got up on your horse to leave.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?!”

Georgi’s ears turned pink in much the way Victor had noticed before. Without the mask, he could see that his cheeks also coloured.

“The evening was amazing! I didn’t want to ruin the memory. Lady Anya ended our betrothal just a few months ago, and let’s not pretend I have been very capable of holding on to someone before her, either...” He glanced off to look at his boots. “I have no reason to think I could interest you when I’m not playing a part.”

Unsure what to say, Victor sat down on the divan next to him so Georgi could not escape him with a furtive downwards glance. Georgi’s dramatic nature was a bit of a joke among courtiers, which made it easy not to take him serious. While losing one’s betrothed to another man would obviously hurt, Victor had not thought that it had hit Georgi so hard he considered himself unlovable. Perhaps it was just that Victor hadn’t paid enough attention, either, wrapped up in his own concerns as he had been.

“How did you find out now?” Georgi asked, eventually.

“Lady Lilia told me.”

“Yes, she recognised me.” Georgi let out a small huff. “I got a lecture about wearing a shoulder-free dress. ‘If you were a woman of your standing, that would be highly inappropriate.’ It didn’t seem to matter I wasn’t actually one of her female students.”

Victor had to laugh. “I quite liked it, but I guess I was admiring other things than your decorum,” he said, playfully.

Georgi couldn’t hide a smile.

“I was worried about you, though,” Georgi added, turning to him. “That’s the only reason I ever thought about mentioning it eventually.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are everyone’s ‘fairy king’, aren’t you? Not just during the masquerades. And you said that’s not what you wanted to be. In fact, you were dressed to run away.”

Victor smiled blithely because he felt like he really needed a mask all of a sudden, and this was one he could summon very easily.

“Yes, well... we all want to flee our lives sometime, I imagine.” His voice had grown quieter, but picked up again. “I wanted something to hide behind that no one would look up to or kneel before. Someone who can pass for a person you may talk to like a human being.”

Slowly, Georgi nodded his head and then, impulsively, grabbed Victor’s hand.

“I don’t know if that helps, but you were always Vitya to me, no matter how many times Lady Lilia has told me to call you prince.”

“You always lacked respect,” Victor agreed.

They both smiled and, with a nervous flutter of his heart, Victor squeezed the fingers wrapped around his.

“You should tell me more about what you like to read, and whatever else comes into your head. I feel like even though I saw you every day, I missed a lot.”

“We both did,” Georgi answered.

Outside the window, Victor heard the bells chime for evening mass as he leaned in to kiss Georgi again.


End file.
